Trump non-ouster will spell doom in 2020, and maybe longer
Credit to Author: Ben Kritz| Date: Wed, 18 Dec 2019 16:15:46 +0000
AS expected — and almost three years overdue, as far as about half of America is concerned — the United State House of Representatives voted today to formally impeach American President Donald Judy Trump on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Although the House hardly any choice, the impeachment process will lead to a social, political and economic disaster in the US that will darken global prospects for 2020, and perhaps beyond.
That is because there is approximately zero chance that talking bag of diarrhea will actually be removed from office; the Senate, which must now sit as jury in the impeachment trial, is controlled by the Republican party, 53 seats to 47. Except for one or two senators who haven’t completely lost their minds, the Republicans will solidly back their president regardless of the evidence against him, and in case anyone was unclear on that point, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has already publicly said he will “coordinate” with Trump’s lawyers to prevent his conviction. A two-thirds majority vote is required to remove the president from office; at this point, it is unlikely that even a simple majority will vote to do so.
So, what happens then? A Senate acquittal probably sets Trump up for reelection; the Democrats, although united in their position that Trump is a blot on America and humanity in general, are united in little else, and are unlikely to rally behind a single candidate who can actually crack the huge, stupid voting base Trump enjoys. A second Trump term could lead to actual social unrest, but the bigger problem is the continuation of Trump’s capricious and destructive policies. That is going to be disastrous for the US, but it will have dire implications for the rest of the world as well.
The most serious of these is in global trade. Both the US and China have highlighted “progress” in the ongoing trade war that Trump started, but the “Phase One” agreement held up as a breakthrough is simply a reduction of some of the punitive tariffs both sides imposed in a tit-for-tat fashion, and not any sort of improvement. One gets the sense that China is only engaging with the US to prevent a complete disaster to its own economy, buying time for it establish other trade relationships such as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership or RCEP. In the meantime, however, trade will continue to be a drag on the global economy, and may be further aggravated by the King of the Combover himself; Trump has demonstrated that he is utterly faithless when it comes to any sort of agreement, and will almost certainly lash out again at China, and probably Europe as well; particularly when he misidentifies trade trouble as the source of the economic woes his country will be facing.
Another casualty of a second Trump term will by the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change mitigation. Trump announced he would withdraw the US from the global agreement even before he was elected; so far, the US has not actually withdrawn from it, but Trump will see his reelection as a mandate to do so. Once the US pulls out, there will be little incentive for the world’s other big polluters like China and the European Union to stay.
Climate change deniers will rejoice, but a collapse of the Paris accord, imperfect as it is, will have far-reaching effects. Much of the financial and technical support needed by poor, climate-affected countries will disappear. Not only will this lead to faster environmental degradation, it is another form of economic drag. Climate change mitigation efforts create jobs and accelerate business activity; these will now simply represent lost opportunities, mainly for countries who are in the worst position to forego them.
The third result of a Trump acquittal and reelection will perhaps affect the Philippines more directly than others. A second Trump term will be an endorsement of his racist and xenophobic immigration policy, which has not been worse than it is simply because it is managed so poorly. As economic conditions tighten in the US — and this has been true all throughout the nation’s history — job-stealing immigrants become convenient scapegoats.
There are few nationalities who are more adept at “job stealing” than Filipinos, some two million of whom are thought to be in the US, and are responsible for a significant amount of remittances back home to the Philippines. Although there would be a certain ironic justice in hundreds or even thousands of Filipino Trump supporters — who couldn’t be more baffling if they had been Jews rallying in support of Hitler — being rounded up and thrown out of the country, it would obviously be detrimental to the Philippines.
ben.kritz@manilatimes.net
Twitter: @benkritz